One of the questions I hear frequently when doing Inbound Marketing is how to create compelling Call To Action offers. The concept of creating usable informative tools is not difficult, but can take some time to come up with offers that are enticing and interesting. It also takes understanding who your audience is, and where they are in the sales funnel.

Just like keywords, you can determine where you customer is in the buying process by the types of information that they are looking for. For example, if your prospect is downloading very general information, they are most likely in the initial states of their search. If they keyword search is more specific, or a long tail keyword, then the prospect is further along in his or her research and closer to the buying stage.

Having offers at all the stages of the sales funnel will help potential customers find you, and also give you insight and analysis into the process that your client goes through. You may find that there are commonalities with regard to the questions that are asked by your customers. By offering information that helps nurture the prospect, you are developing the lead and helping them become a customer.

There are many ways to create content for website visitors to download. Downloadable content and offers that appeal to a target audience is a critical component of inbound marketing.

Creating a call to action is a way to help your prospects find answers to their questions, download valuable information (to them) and in doing so, self-identify as a potential customer or lead. There are many ways to put information together for your prospects. Here are a few of the the Best Call To Action ideas to enhance conversions:

Whitepaper or eBook: You can also write a whitepaper or eBook from a previous research study or data set. Compile three (3) to five (5) blog posts that discussed similar topics and combine them into a whitepaper or eBook.

Top 10 Industry Trends: Document the ten latest trends impacting your industry this year. Write a short summary on 10 new industry developments or write what you think will be the 10 biggest changes to your industry during the next year.

How-To Guides: Create simple guides for your prospects to download and help them with a problem. For example, if you’re selling mortgages, create a guide to picking the right mortgage for you.

Product Demo Video: Create a video that shows off all of your product’s features and benefits. At the end of the video give the lead an option to download a product tip sheet guide.

Product Tip Sheet Guide: Create a product tip sheet guide that outlines how people could use your product or service to help them with their problem or need. For example, you’re selling backup software. Create a guide that outlines how people can use you’re backup software to decrease their backup costs and lower IT support time.

Common Questions: Write down the 10 or 20 questions you most commonly hear and create a tip sheet or guide that answers each question.

Checklist: Create a checklist of steps people could take to solve the problem that your product/service solves. For example, if you’re a moving service you could create a downloadable packing checklist.

Case Studies: Show off your leading customers and share their success with future customer. Video record their testimonial for even more content and to build credibility. Offer the case study to be downloaded.

LinkedIn Question and Answers: Go to LinkedIn Answers and find every question and answer that relates to your industry. Compile them together in an eBook format.

PowerPoint Presentations: Use your PowerPoint presentations and turn them into compelling offers. Post the presentations on SlideShare and embed them into blog articles.

Expert Interview Videos: Interview the experts at your company and have them answer common questions for prospects. Use the videos as a way to build credibility and a relationship with your leads

Sales Team Materials: Work with your sales to determine what content they think quality prospects would like to download. This can really help you if you’re having a problem with creating

quality leads for your sales team.

The Golden Rule: Use each piece of content in at least four different ways. For example, you create a whitepaper and you promote the whitepaper by writing a series of blog articles, sending out a press release, using the whitepaper in lead nurturing emails, and adding it to your monthly newsletter

Twerking has officially been added to the Oxford Dictionary, thanks, in part to Mylie Cyrus’s exhibitionist performance during the MTV Video Music Awards. Appparenty “twerk” is a verb, as in “to twerk”, which involves provacatively thrusting and grinding the hips in a squatting stance. Personally, I find it to be a bit graceless and less-than-sexy, but I am also not a fan of Ms. Cyrus and found her dance to be pretty lame and other than being suggestive, pretty pathetic.

My understanding is the the term “twerking” was derived from Hip Hop, and may have been a variation of the phrase “working” it.

No one is immune from the “twerk smirk”… And while it may have been bad, it’s “Breaking Bad” worthy. Check out the looks of horror on Hank and Marie’s face as they watch Miley make a fool of herself…

Smarketing seems to be one of those phrases that otherwise intelligent people have come up with to describe a unified sales and marketing approach. To me, the term “smarketing” is like nails on a blackboard… It’s so annoying and it makes me grit my teeth when I hear pseudo marketers trying impress using this phrase. Anyone who has been around more than ten minutes realizes that marketing and sales must absolutely work together to succeed, and if they miss that point, they are going to be left behind in the dust.

So is there some scientific explanation that can explain the Twerking and Smarketing phenomena? It’s had to say,but apparently it may not be appropriate for anyone over the age of 25!

One thing is for sure, both “Smarketing” and “Twerking” can make you look, well, stupid!

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